February 6, 2015 Did You Know… that 16% of all sovereign bonds guarantee investors a loss? • In the beginning, there were interest rates. Then, after 2008, hyperactive central banks sought to restore growth by adopting Zero Interest Rates Policies (ZIRP) on a premise that zero rates must be better than low rates. Another ZIRP objective was to lift prices of all financial assets, unleashing the “wealth effect”.

Since Gold reached an all-time high of $1,923 in 2012 it is still down 33 percent in dollar terms. As global central banks started their easing efforts, gold now paints a much different picture in euros, yen and Canadian dollars.

“Gold is priced in dollars, so when a currency goes down against the dollar, there is an automatic reaction: Gold will go up in that currency,” explains Simon Mikhailovich of the Tocqueville Bullion Reserve Fund.

Let’s take the euro for example. After the European Central Bank (ECB) launched a quantitative easing program on January 22, it is now trading at levels not seen since 2003 ($1.12, down 7 percent this year).

February 6, 2015 Did You Know… that 16% of all sovereign bonds guarantee investors a loss? • In the beginning, there were interest rates. Then, after 2008, hyperactive central banks sought to restore growth by adopting Zero Interest Rates Policies (ZIRP) on a premise that zero rates must be better than low rates. Another ZIRP objective was to lift prices of all financial assets, unleashing the “wealth effect”.